Beyond the Jamming Avoidance Response: Eigenmannia respond to social envelopes
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1
The Johns Hopkins University, United States
Envelopes are a property of time-varying signals that are present in the visual, auditory and electrosensory system. Weakly electric fish generate well-defined sensory envelopes through interactions of their electric fields in social groups. Observations of electric fish in the field suggest that weakly electric fish may respond to envelope stimuli by changing their own electric organ discharge (EOD) frequency. We examined the behavioral responses of Eigenmannia to social envelope stimuli. Stimuli consisted of two summed sinewaves that had a specified frequency difference and envelope relative to the fish’s EOD frequency. We found that fish changed their EOD frequency in response to social envelope stimuli. The direction fish shift their EOD frequency was predicted by a model of the JAR with the addition of a front-end non-linearity (i.e. rectification) and a low-pass filter. In addition, we found that the magnitude of the envelope response was dependent on the initial envelope frequency. Fish showed an increased envelope response when the initial envelope frequencies were lower. When fish shifted their EOD frequencies it generally resulted in a higher final envelope frequency within the band of 5 to 15 Hz. We also found that the envelope response was dependent on the stimulus amplitude, whereby increased responses were observed to higher stimulus amplitudes.
Keywords:
electrosensory system,
envelopes,
Jamming Avoidance Response,
weakly electric fish
Conference:
Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology, College Park. Maryland USA, United States, 5 Aug - 10 Aug, 2012.
Presentation Type:
Poster (but consider for student poster award)
Topic:
Sensory: Electrosensory
Citation:
Stamper
SA,
Madhav
MS,
Cowan
NJ and
Fortune
ES
(2012). Beyond the Jamming Avoidance Response: Eigenmannia respond to social envelopes.
Conference Abstract:
Tenth International Congress of Neuroethology.
doi: 10.3389/conf.fnbeh.2012.27.00284
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Received:
04 Jul 2012;
Published Online:
07 Jul 2012.
*
Correspondence:
Miss. Sarah A Stamper, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States, sarah.a.stamper@gmail.com